


Castles in the Sand

by Windian



Category: Tales of Berseria
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 23:38:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10581855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windian/pseuds/Windian
Summary: The moon casts no light of its own.If it would mean Velvet would smile again, you'd gladly step into her brother's shoes.





	

Probably, Velvet could tell you were getting restless. You'd seen pictures of the ocean in books, of course, but no illustration can compare to the crumbly, pastry-flaky way sand falls apart under your burrowing fingertips; or how the waves tease the shoreside, playing cat-and mouse with the land.

When Velvet sighs, and decrees it's time to call it quits for the day, you sprint as fast as your legs can take you to the water-side, eager to join in with the ocean's game. You follow the water in when it sucks in its breath, as close as you dare, leaping, laughing, stumbling back and shrieking when-- inevitably-- the ocean catches you off-guard and cold water catches around your ankles.

Laphicet! Velvet calls to you from across the beach. Take off your shoes. You'll ruin them.

Duly, you take them off, unrolling your stockings too and tucking them into the safety of your shoe.

A hermit crab scuttles into your line of vision. You nudge it with the end of your shoe, to see what will happen, and it darts off into the shade of a cockle-mottled rock. You crouch down low onto all hours, hauling your belly across the hot sand and imagine what it would be like to carry your home on your back.

Laphicet? What are you doing?

Velvet stands above you, shadow thrown long across the sand.

You colour a little. Pretending to be a hermit crab doesn't sound a very grown-up thing to say.

Nothing, you say, instead.

It's fine, Velvet says. Laphi was always going crazy about crabs and bugs and all kinds of unpleasant things, too. Must be a boy thing.

Your ears perk up at that. Velvet doesn't mention your name-sake often, but you cling onto the tiny morsels she feeds you. When Velvet talks about her brother the dream of a soft smile plays on her lips. You catch her snorting at some old joke, or her eyebrows pushing together as she puzzles some old memory out. Always, she thumbs her old comb, the gloss on the metal buffed away by her constant handling, thumb chasing endless circles on the bronze. You think you can catch glimpses of the person she used to be, like snatches of reflection lost in the tumult of the waves.

Every morsel Velvet hands out you treasure like a precious gem. You want to pick up Laphi's shoes, dust them off; step into them.

Maybe then, Velvet will smile again.

She seems in the mood to talk, so you ask her: did you used to visit the beach with Laphi?

She nods.

There was a little cove down from Taliesin we'd visit in the summer, when Laphi was well enough. He'd spend hours drafting me into building sandcastles with him. Even though the tide would just wash it all away.

Sandcastles? You ask her.

Here.

She digs out an old discarded container from the sand and fills it. Tips it on its end and gives it a magician's tap. When she removes it, the sand has magically held the cup's shape.

Amazing!

Laphi was always buried in encyclopedias of the world. This one time, she tells you, he saw a picture in a book of the castle at Loegres, and he became completely obsessed with recreating it. We spent so long building the thing. It had this turret _here_ , and the moat went around this part--

As she speaks, Velvet begins to build, recreating her childhood in the sand. Pass me that old bucket, Laphicet, she asks you, and you scrabble to help her. Together you erect towers and fortifications and dig out the moat. The shadows grow long as the two of you crouch over the construction. Rokurou and then Eizen pass by with badly-hidden curiosity, but you're too engrossed to engage them for long.

At last, the castle is finished. You inspect it from every angle: the perfect turret and spires, complete with leaves to replace Midgand's banners and a hard-boiled egg for the cathedral bell-tower. It's not perfect but it'll do. Artistic liberty, is what Magilou called it. Smiling with tired satisfaction, you turn back towards Velvet.

But she's gone.

She's still right next to you, but Velvet's not there anymore. Her smile has been extinguished into embers; she looks into the sunset with eyes as cold as lumps of burnt-out charcoal.

Velvet? You speak tentatively.

Sometimes, she still scares you.

What does it matter? She says. He'll never see it now. He'll never go any of the places in those books.

The tide is coming in. Within a few hours, it'll take your castle with it. A cool new fear pools in your chest, as cold and sudden as the waves, that cold hand closing your ankles. Velvet looks so distant, so far away that you see a premonition: see the waves roll and crash, taking not just the castle but Velvet, too, away with it. The swift tide pulling her away to some dark, wet place, where you can no longer reach her.

For the first time, when you think of your namesake, you feel not curiosity and envy, but a pang of something like hate.

 

Later, when the camp's made up and the stars have flickered into life like pin pricks in the sky, Eizen comes to find you by the kicked-down castle, sitting by the shoreside.

He inspect the debris; the cracked-open egg. For a long time, he says nothing.

Why'd you destroy it? He asks.

It didn't look right, you tell him. Nothing like the real thing.

The moon sits, half full, perched on the horizon. You dig your toes into the quickly cooling sand, and cast your mind back to the book you read about astronomy, back when you were a number under a master's thrall.

_The moon casts no light of its own, and is, instead, a pale reflection and imitation of our own sun's majestic light.  
_

Eizen puts a hand on your head for a long minute. Passes no judgement. Aside from a swift rap on the wrist for insubordination, no-one had ever touched you, back when you were a tool.

He ruffles your hair, and drops his hand with a short little sigh.

Come on, he says. Time for bed. _  
_


End file.
